EU Plots Pirate Bay Ban and Piracy Clampdown

The proposals in the report, drafted by the 73 year old Spanish socialist Manuel Medina Ortega, show many similarities to the wish lists of the RIAA, IFPI and MPAA we published earlier. The report calls for more responsibility and liability for ISPs, while copyright infringing content has to be filtered from the Internet.

Even though the European Parliament has voted against so called ‘three-strikes’ proposals twice before, this is also suggested as a viable measure against piracy. It’s proposed that ISPs should disconnect subscribers who share copyrighted content, based on information provided by the entertainment industry.

In addition, national courts are encouraged to take action against BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay. Apparently, the report deems BitTorrent sites to be illegal – which is a bold statement without any legal backup. Last year, Italy imposed a nation wide block on The Pirate Bay, but this was reversed in court due to a lack of jurisdiction; this might change if the new proposals are adopted.

In a draft of the report we read ‘The activities of websites that are part of the peer-to-peer phenomenon and which allow downloading of protected works or services without the necessary authorisation are illegal, and no exception can be applied to them. So the activity of internet users who send files to their peers must be regarded as an illegal act of communication to the public without the possibility of exceptions being applied.’

ISPs are further encouraged to identify and filter copyright infringing content on their networks. As we’ve said before, this might work on networks such as FastTrack/Kazaa, but it remains unclear what methods the ISP will have to implement to distinguish between copyright infringing and legal content on more tricky networks, such as BitTorrent. That will be a tough job, if not impossible. In common with RIAA recommendations, the report suggests that ISPs should be held liable for the actions of their customers.

More details are available on La Quadrature, with Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of the site commenting, ‘The Medina report is ridiculous and full of repressive measures. It is in total contradiction with what MEPs voted twice against ‘graduated response’ and with the realities of Internet. It only favors entertainment industries and doesn’t contain anything for culture, the artists, or their public.’

Of course, we encourage all of our European readers to write to their representatives in the European Parliament, as this is clearly not the right path to take.